Wholesale Inventory & Supply Chain: What It Means For Your Bottom Line

[00:00:00] Welcome to Around The Horn in Wholesale Distribution with Kevin Brown and Tom Burton. Sponsored each week by Lead Smart Technologies, Tom, Kevin and their guests review the news of the week and dive deep into the topics impacting manufacturers, wholesale distribution,

[00:00:20] independent sales agents, and the global wholesale supply chain. Whether it's Aminay, Sass and Cloud Computing, B2BE Commerce or Supply Chain Issues, we peel back the onion with our guests into the topics that impact your business. The most. Good morning everybody. My great to have you with us.

[00:00:39] We've got Tom Burton here in Mike Mortensen with ARG Industrial Mike. Are you in Anchorage today? I am. Awesome. I know you have a, you know, a residence there but you seem to be constant. Absolutely all over the place. Yeah.

[00:00:57] That's the company as grown and we're, you know, got our hands in and so much stuff. I'm all over the place lately. Now that's that's great. So Mike, we're happy to have you with us.

[00:01:08] We'll chat a little bit about ARG in just a minute before we get rolling but we'll dive into kind of doing a little bit of our housekeeping that we do every week. So I'm Kevin Brown.

[00:01:18] I'm here with Tom Burton as we mentioned Mike and Tom and I are lifelong friends and the co-founders of Leedsmark Technologies and Leedsmark is a AI enabled customer intelligence and CRM solution that enables wholesale distributors and manufacturers to get deep insights

[00:01:35] into their business that they've never had before to see what's going on both at the customer and within their company across their organization and across their customers, use tools to accelerate growth by those deep insights. So we get together every week.

[00:01:50] We chat about what we describe as around the horn and wholesale distribution and manufacturing. And what we do is we put out a newsletter every week and that newsletter again is called around the horn and wholesale distribution.

[00:02:02] If you don't get it and you would like to get that newsletter simply way to do that, you can put a note in the comments here today if you're alive with us on LinkedIn Live

[00:02:11] YouTube Live or Facebook Live, you can send an email to hello at Leedsmarktech.com and we'll get you on that list. War, you can go to the website for the podcast which is www.aroundthehornpod.com and sign up there and see previous episodes.

[00:02:30] So if you are listening on the podcast on Apple or Spotify or any of the other popular podcasts formats and you are not seeing us on the live broadcast that we're doing today or recording of that, you won't be seeing the newsletter when this is the newsletter

[00:02:45] that we review each week and we bring guests in like Mike to talk about what's going on and the economy and technology and sales and marketing and M&A and all the things that impact

[00:02:55] both manufacturing and wholesale distribution which is the markets that Tom and I work closely with. So we're ready to dive in today but before we dive into the news, Mike, fill us in a little

[00:03:06] bit about you, ARG, your growth where you guys are headed, some of the cool stuff going there. Yeah, absolutely thanks Kevin. So ARG industrial is a distribution company 100% in the employee owned based out of Anchorage Alaska.

[00:03:22] We have 12 locations across Alaska, Washington, Oregon and we are opening our 13-location in a new state in Idaho and a town called Hayden which is just north of North of the court lane so that whole area is just really growing and filling in. So that's our newest location.

[00:03:40] You heard it here first. I was just going to say you heard it here first. You're very good. You're a first-year press police is going out so I hope my director of market today so I hope my director of marketing is not mad at you for saying. Yep.

[00:03:52] Well, as long as we make sure we get that announcement we'll post that as well with any newsletter. Yeah but we're focused in the hose and feeding space. We also have a significant portion of our businesses in the lifting and rigging space and

[00:04:04] so we sell and service all the products in those verticals and do tons and tons of assembly across our company. We are fully invested in the digital transformation and over the last four years have

[00:04:18] been working on a digital twin of our business online or B2B e-commerce platform and were actively engaged in rolling out technology tools to service our customers and bring what we do closer to them. So we've got about 200 employees across our company and excited about growth. That's awesome.

[00:04:39] You know one of the reasons that you were here is you were with us I think middle of last year and people don't aren't connected with you that are listening I would highly recommend reaching out on LinkedIn.

[00:04:52] You are actively involved not just in ARG but in the overall growth of distribution with your involvement with NASHAD and I did co buying group and trade associations and you could a lot of time giving back into the industry versus taking it.

[00:05:11] We're at some of the same conferences on an ongoing basis. I'm Chelsea again, middle and latter part of the year and a few and so it's folks like you that are not just driving their business or getting back to our industry and looking

[00:05:25] at a digital transformation within your organization that we like to have with us as we go through and talk about the news. So, I'm sorry thanks. Tom I've made it almost seven minutes without you being able to say anything. You ready to dive in?

[00:05:37] Another day at the opposite. All right. Why don't we fire off on the news here again? We're going to review some of the key articles from this week's newsletter around the horn in wholesale distribution newsletter so again if you don't get that and you'd

[00:05:52] like to please let us know. The one thing I missed, you know what our audience is growing each week both in the podcast and the live but if you enjoy what you see and part of the discussion we have when folks

[00:06:07] like Mike Joina said whatever format you're listening on. Leave us a review, hit the like button, hit the subscribe button wherever you can and then share this with your colleagues so we can continue to bring you this information each week. So that's it Tom.

[00:06:23] What's the first one we want to talk about? Well, I guess we're going to start as usual with the economy and you know Mike we were chatting a little bit about this before we went on wholesale inventories are down, revised down in January.

[00:06:40] I think this was not surprising to you and what you were seeing. So not at all in fact I think when we look at what's happened over the last couple of years especially for distributors we had we had such a hard time sourcing products

[00:06:59] and your inventory is really the lifeblood of your business and distribution. That's what we do and if we don't have anything to sell it makes it pretty tough and so we spent a lot of time sourcing products alternative suppliers of products and stock

[00:07:17] piling products when we could because we didn't know how long this disruption was going to happen and so I think you know when when I am out speaking broadly and the industry and talking to other distributors most of us are sitting on mountains of inventory which

[00:07:34] you know and one way you can look at that and say oh boy you got too much you got too much capital tied up but it really was a security blanket you know going through the last

[00:07:45] couple years and I think it's being felt at the manufacturer level now that they're starting to catch up and working through their backlog of orders many of us distributors are starting to right size our inventory and that's going to take some time based on some

[00:08:02] of the things I've heard from colleagues in the industry. So Mike let me throw a question at you to kind of go with that you know a lot of times we think

[00:08:10] about some of the big hits in during the pandemic right came to you know some of the industrial folks but a lot of the safety distributors and folks like that that we're trying to get their

[00:08:22] arms around PPE and get the difficulty that they had in getting those products but my assumption would be that yes while that happened the same impact though was happening your business even though

[00:08:36] you might not focus on latex gloves and face masks and things like that because of the shipping issues and the shutdown of the factories and so for this at accurate for sure and in our

[00:08:49] industry in the vertical that we operate in assembly is huge so we're taking a variety of different products and putting them together to make something holy a whole new product and

[00:09:01] you only have to be short one of those components right in the water right and so you've got to you got to be able to pivot and when you're doing assembly work especially in the hose and fitting space

[00:09:13] there's a lot of ways to skin the cat but when it gets down to you know you've got to have a piece of hose and you gotta have a fitting on both ends otherwise you don't have problems right

[00:09:21] you know we tend to be really a first to being short of one of those items so we just we added a ton you brought up shipping right the transportation costs went through the road

[00:09:36] and times slowed down and you know so all of those factories went into our decision to really invest our money in you know an extra inventory and fortunately our products don't really

[00:09:51] have a shelf life so they're not gonna go on so it seemed like a safe safe play and I think I think a lot of people went there. So quick question before we leave here Mike do you

[00:10:03] think with what you're seeing right hey we're just not buying anything and everything that we can get our hands on? Are you think that you're going to result in maybe a deflation pricing with manufacturers? Grace is a propane because the demand isn't so big as we look through

[00:10:18] the rest of the year. Well you know that's kind of been what's happened in cycles in the past at least in my experiences manufacturers always overshoot the curve right they're building building building building products and then you know distributors are a little bit you know like more close

[00:10:35] to the action and so we go okay let's turn off the orders and manufacturers still keep going and then at some point they're like hey let's make a deal we've got all this inventory that

[00:10:44] we're sitting on it we're not so much comfortable with let's let's move that and so as as distributors we kind of play this game like okay if the manufacturers are gonna overshoot

[00:10:53] the costs are going to come down we're going to be able to capture that increase our margins I'm not seeing that yet. A little pockets but you know we're still seeing pricing creases come down

[00:11:04] so you know maybe that's part of this soft landing that everybody's shooting for but I'm not seeing it yet still still hearing some of that but not yet. And we're hearing some of

[00:11:16] that as well from from other folks that are in your same spot in other verticals as well that you know the end users trying to drive and demand lower prices right they're looking for those cuts

[00:11:29] and or bits that they're putting out but at the manufacturer they're not seeing that yet they saw the increases and what you just mentioned about continuity see increases that's intriguing as well. Yeah and I think over the last couple years distributors if they were playing their game right

[00:11:45] really benefited right it was obvious because because it was especially independent distribution right that you know integrated supply and some of these you know publicly traded companies that are in our space they demand much higher turns out of their inventory than yeah then then somebody like us but

[00:12:04] you know we're distributors that played their inventory right really benefited now on a situation where there's lots of products in the market and the buyer is going to be back in the driver's seat a little bit we're gonna have to we're not to manage that. Like what's

[00:12:18] you know different verticals within wholesale distribution you know or different but what do you see across the board and with your peers in your arena and you know you go to a lot of events that

[00:12:29] are you know folks in your executive level from other verticals as well what's what's the goal or target for the best inventory turn rate? Well that's a tough question Kevin I mean if you're

[00:12:44] in the electrical sector you know or maybe the Jansans sector they're looking for eight to 10 turns you talk down and believe supply and they want 12 turns on inventory no matter way for the color and and I think that's why they struggle and independent distributors

[00:12:59] that are willing to live on two and a half or three times turns because we know we want to have you know like I said if we've got a hose and one fitting we don't have a problem right so

[00:13:08] we're we're able to live on much lower turns and unfortunately capture more margin to support that but I think I think that's that's that's a two-fold you know answer it depends on what

[00:13:22] what business strategy you have besides your business and what vertical you're in. I guess it ties a lot then to that the configuration component right so you're living on shorter turns much higher margin much higher in inventory levels than a guy that's selling a box of

[00:13:43] fasteners or something. Right cool well let's bounce ahead you know like next article kind of talks to that as well this was something that we you know we've been talking about this for quite

[00:13:57] some time and the articles from a writer's article talks about risk rains and ocean shipping industry and economic experts are talking about this so big conference earlier this week and in Long Beach about the container shipping business but what's now been happening you know we

[00:14:15] started talking about this early last year we talked regularly about the issues of the Panama Canal and then Q4 we started talking about the issues tying to the Suez Canal and now you start pulling

[00:14:29] those things together and this article is really interesting it was quoting some things from former ride to US defense secretary Robert Hates and really talking about what he described as a risk is the new normal for ocean shipping industry than handles 80% of global trade. The geopolitical

[00:14:47] tensions the protectionism ideas that are going on climate change issues and just pricing and now we're seeing you know with this whole scenario going on in Suez Canal I think it was

[00:14:57] earlier this week for the first time a ship was actually sunk by these Hootie rebels. Now we're adding what a million plus dollars in each direction of fuel costs when they're going around the

[00:15:09] Cape of Good Hope. A lot of changes going on in this that are going to you know it looks like this particular article is kind of reinforcing what we've been trying to talk about here consistently

[00:15:20] is we got to be paying attention to this. It seems to me and in my definitely while you're taking on this it seems to me that what was maybe perceived as maybe an acute inconvenience has

[00:15:34] turned into a chronic issue and isn't necessarily going to go away right it's not like oh it's just something like a strike right and the strike goes away or whatever and now we're back

[00:15:45] back to normal. I mean what does this do to the whole you know shipping and everything long term and where you source from and all of that I mean it seems like there's definitely some long-term

[00:15:57] ramifications to this and that it's not again an acute sort of inconvenience it's just going to go away one day and we're going to be back quote unquote back to normal. Yeah I think I think shipping

[00:16:10] issues have been you know and and risk around shipping has been around since since people started sailing boats from continent to continent right I mean you look at what's going on now and it's probably

[00:16:23] it's definitely different than what we've experienced over the last couple decades where we didn't have some of these issues like you said but the Panama Canal and that becoming less and less

[00:16:32] of a viable choice and people you know sinking ships with missiles we we have shipping is the lifeblood of our business here in Alaska nothing really comes over the road it all comes out of

[00:16:45] the port of Tacoma or porous yall that you haven't seen Alaska thank goodness we don't have people Canada launching missiles at our ships and sinking right me up out there but it's it's easy to

[00:16:55] think well all these problems are happening a world away how does it really affect me but I look at it kind of like the shoplifting effect right if if a store allows shoplifting to a certain

[00:17:05] extent the prices that they charge for their product have to come up and we all pay for that same thing here you know insurance companies are looking at this and shipping companies and and masks are looking

[00:17:17] at this and saying we have to hedge our bets and we're all going to pay for more for that in our cost of transportation and that's kind of flow through the cost of goods that we have to

[00:17:24] provide to our customers so this this is a this is an emerging thing that we all need to keep our eye on I think you're hot on with that and that's one of the reasons that we've been consistently

[00:17:35] talking about this and I think you know the main fact you're just going to feel this first right so unless you're you know wholesale distributor and you're doing some private label work or

[00:17:44] bringing some things in directly but container costs have gone through the roof in the last couple months right that's going to trickle down as the manufacturers are feeling that and I think back to what you know earlier discussion right we're talking about inventory turns if you're

[00:17:59] in a high inventory turn market this can be really having impact on you if you're trying to do kind of just in time type inventory versus a company like yours it might have more stable you know

[00:18:11] higher levels of inventory so this is I think a time where wholesale distributors and we've got an article we're going to talk about later about partnering with your manufacturers and in fact it's you know a couple articles down the road you're wondering about the financial impact of

[00:18:26] that manufacturers is having a really good partnership and understanding I think how your key manufacturer partners are managing these issues right because if you've got a you know old school company that's not even really paying attention I don't know how you could not be paying attention

[00:18:43] but not doing some things proactively thinking about hey wait a minute we've got geopolitical tensions in China Russia right but the Chinese part of it is probably much more impactful we've got

[00:18:55] if I'm on the east coast of the US or I'm in Europe I've got the Panama Canal and the Suez Canal issues I probably need more than just a junior person managing my supply chain yeah and I think

[00:19:10] the latest you know episode here that we're seeing in shipping drama is is just the latest episode I think the last couple years is warm-bass up to the fact that if you're not having conversations with your manufacturing partners about how they're sourcing their raw materials

[00:19:28] and how that affects their ability to supply you your missing a mark you know almost all the manufacturers that I'm talking to in our space are talking about reshoring in some way and moving their investments back to the United States or closer to home where these

[00:19:43] overseas shipping complications aren't affecting their ability to serve yeah I think that's great it's critical we'll be watching that a consistent basis because it's the lifeblood of what we all do right at the end of the day it's one of the best being a technology company it's your

[00:20:01] company like yours or the lifeblood of companies like ours right and and how that trickles down is going to be critical for us all to be to be watching I just I think what the core point of this

[00:20:13] article was it's different than it's there's always been and I agree with totally with your point right since you know ships started leaving Europe and Asia and moving goods around the world by boats this has been an issue but I think what now what we're interesting what really

[00:20:31] intrigues me and before we go on I'll just throw this out to both of you guys we've got a lot to cover today so we'll move on quickly but you know when intrigues me about this is um and we're

[00:20:40] going to talk a little bit today about AI and technology and there's so much in technology out there right now that can help smaller companies act in function and and serve their customers like big

[00:20:53] companies right so we see that in the technology world needs more technologies happens to be one of that those companies that can do a lot with a little um we'll guess what those who do rebels are

[00:21:02] doing a lot with the little right I don't know the exact numbers but I've seen this on the news multiple times right you've got this faction offshoot group that's firing like something like $10,000 drones are attacking ships and the military is using $2 million warheads to knock the

[00:21:25] $10,000 drones out of the air right we've got a little group that's doing a lot of the little impact larger organizations uh and large in countries so it's kind of interesting to watch that play out it's just similar to the tech world right you know it's economical for that

[00:21:42] great right yeah it doesn't always it doesn't always take uh something super expensive and uh and you know gigantic to get the results just one yep so good all right Tom let's dive ahead

[00:21:55] this uh won't you take us to the next article buddy yeah so next article uh why AI can boost the economy faster than past technologies um you know I thought it was an interesting article

[00:22:09] I have a couple of different viewpoints on this so what they were talking about in different ways the different ways that AI can could be used in an organization to make it more efficient to

[00:22:21] remove jobs that are mundane tedious whatever all of that kind of stuff and that it can happen much faster than maybe other technologies right other technologies take a while to have an impact

[00:22:34] um maybe years what they're saying in the article here is that AI can have a much faster impact in the workplace and in a much faster impact on on efficiencies which I agree with I think

[00:22:47] and this isn't really necessarily covered in the article but this is just something that I'm seeing as you're seeing a lot of layoffs recently that are quote-unquote attributed to AI

[00:22:58] and I think a lot of companies are getting ahead of their skis here a bit um i think that they're thinking we can lay off and we can remove people but yet they still don't really have a good

[00:23:08] understanding of what they're going to do with AI to place those jobs or to augment the rest of the team to make them effective with using AI to basically be able to accomplish what was being

[00:23:21] done by those workers so I think that I agree with this article but I also think that we're seeing a lot of companies getting ahead of themselves and using this as a reason they believe they can just

[00:23:31] cut cost but then they really don't know exactly what they're going to do with AI at this point to actually you know make that result so I think we're getting ahead of ourselves but I do agree

[00:23:42] there's a lot of opportunity there Mike thoughts on that yeah i i i think this is like the next industrial revolution and if you follow and I think the article spoke to that a little bit if you

[00:23:54] follow industrial revolutions of history they they created jobs rather than eliminated them but there is a lot of job you know transition and people are going to have to learn how to do

[00:24:05] different things which is probably going to be the barometer on how fast we adopt some of the technology it's technologies here way before people can adopt it and usually it takes it takes that adaptation and people's ability to to start utilizing it before you really get the full

[00:24:26] the full effect of that technology and I think that story is being written right now so so small little use cases or what we're looking at and rather than using it to replace people it's really

[00:24:39] how do we how do we get the slingshot effect not only the extra increase in productivity from from AI but then what do we unleash these people that would that were shackled by computer

[00:24:50] tasking that wasn't human related how do we unleash those people in our business model to get that second step up I think that's a great great point Mike in what I love about this is

[00:25:02] and this is what I believe we're going to see right is the companies that are doing this correctly they're not going to eliminate jobs they're going to shorten their hiring curve of how many people

[00:25:14] they need to add because there's so much more efficient right and if you look at that you're still going to have a direction of retirement or people that decide they want to start a new career for

[00:25:24] the people coming in I think this will be you know net gains and it's what we've always seen in history I think it's important we point out you know in this particular article this was

[00:25:36] the federal reserve and and so in our newsletter that we're discussing here right we have a breakout in sections about the economy and supply chain we're still on our first section today

[00:25:45] that we talk about right but I put this AI related article in here because what the federal reserve is where this discussion was happened right from this article so they may basically said you know top federal reserve official and other thinkers at the high-prote this so-called high-profile

[00:26:01] conference are talking about higher growth rising I'm less inflation within the marketplace and then they said there's no technology that they were aware of this is goes quoting Mary Daily from the San Francisco Fed there's no technology I'm aware of that ever reduced employment on the net

[00:26:20] but these type of things significantly impact the potential of growth as she said the significantly disrupts the allocation of that employment and who wins and who loses from the new technologies which is I think really great and it just brings to my mind you know

[00:26:39] it was having a discussion a while back with a company in the UK that is doing some really consistent hiring and globally right global company and my comment one of their executives you know

[00:26:51] had been you're doing so much hiring but what if you could take the existing team that you have and raise their efficiencies by 10 or 15 percent how many fewer people do you need to hire

[00:27:06] and it's less about the idea of hiring the fewer people it's more about the drain that all of that energy and costs and onboarding and all those things are we'll get to the digital twin thing

[00:27:18] but what if we could just use the right technology even with pre-AI technology well right it's already becoming a force multiplier in our businesses if you're and it doesn't even need to be generative AI that you're engaging with just a technology that we have today

[00:27:35] if you're using it correctly it's a force multiplier for the employee you know pool that you have now yeah just a legend if we all stop using email and deciding to stop handwriting you know

[00:27:45] I mean like just just think about that what would a drag that would be on your business and how many more people with you have to have communicating for your company you know technology it shouldn't

[00:27:58] replace people it should augment how we how we work make us more efficient get greater jobs satisfaction and I don't really see this technology is being any different that some of the other technologies we've had in the past in that way definitely different in other ways

[00:28:14] no I think you're spot on and kind of wrapping this up what I think is interesting again why we put in the slot that it's in is this is talking about the economic impact of these things versus just

[00:28:25] the things we can do in our business and the comment was made again from this San Francisco Fed president was that they said the typical process by which new technologies are incorporated into business operations and generate productivity gains as first by reflecting the mundane tasks

[00:28:45] done by humans then by augmenting the work of humans then leading to new types of jobs entirely here's the difference though and I love this comment she says rather than this happening sequentially like it historically has right now what we're seeing is all of those things are happening

[00:29:03] simultaneously which that was their point about the impact on the economy but this is going to have an a positive note so kind of a cool article yeah definitely got a different different viewpoint

[00:29:16] on it which I thought was good as you said from the economic perspective yep yeah we usually look at and we're going to talk a little bit more about AI so let's jump into our manufacturing distribution article smaller suppliers finances have deteriorated since pre-andemic

[00:29:32] from supply chain dive magazine interesting thoughts we kind of talked about this a little bit when we were talking about you know the shipping issues earlier right now we're talking about some of

[00:29:44] the financial impacts that mid-range suppliers have and Mike I kind of want to throw this a little bit to you I don't want to put you on the spot but what kind of makes me think is you know

[00:29:55] when you look at the statistics from this article about what has happened with kind of that mid tier and most of this is related to manufacturers significant changes right in their EBITDA declining and so forth I would guess a company like yours probably has

[00:30:15] a broad mix of very large maybe multinational manufacturers that you partner with but you probably have some very strategic people that are maybe I don't want to say mom and dad but maybe there a 30 50 hundred million dollar company versus a multi-billion dollar company is that

[00:30:33] a reasonable statement for sure yeah we deal with thousands of different manufacturing partners have some loans it makes my ice cross but yeah and they run the gamut from like you said global global companies to regional manufacturers hmm yeah so you know this article was really

[00:30:53] talking with just about just some of the examples they talked about this was from a research piece that had been done it's talked about from 2019 through 2022 EBITDA decline by over 20% at middle market companies while for large public companies they had the exact reverse with a growth in that

[00:31:12] setting and it just it kind of makes me think about in the reason that I shared this article and wanted us to chat about it briefly is you know how do you when you look at this it surprised me

[00:31:22] won the data surprised me but secondly is when you talk about it let's just say you had 500 suppliers how do you pay attention to the viability of your suppliers and if people aren't they probably

[00:31:36] should be you know for for us I think the last couple years really pulled back the curtain on just how capable our manufacturers businesses were outside of the quality of the product that they were producing

[00:31:54] I mean this really did it was a stress test on everybody's business and so while some of these large companies that had processes in place and they had to diversified you know raw material supply chain

[00:32:08] and they had mechanisms to pass costs on to distributors are their customers they saw they saw their their ability to increase their profits because prices were growing up so they were getting

[00:32:20] you know if they if they had a good margin on their product the margin dollars were growing whereas some of the smaller companies that you know may not have diversified supply they may not had technology baked into their company to be able to communicate with their

[00:32:32] their customers better do you do business in the way that we wanted to or the mechanism to proactively pass on cost of their their customers they suffered and we saw that and you saw people go away

[00:32:47] or get acquired right and so lots of change happening there that's good I found this article interesting if you kind of closed out with a comment in the the from the research coming out of the

[00:32:59] research that they're done and they said there are companies that have managed their suppliers that arms lengths and very transactually and they're the ones that don't have resilient supply chains because there's no bond built talking about a partnership so it talks about collaboration between

[00:33:13] corporate entities is key to having sustained critical relationships right and I think we probably saw some of this through the pandemic is there were people who had developed relationships and partnerships with manufacturers who were getting goods when they were being allocated because

[00:33:31] they knew they were partners versus the guys who were always grind in and trying to get every nickel out of a manufacturer and an a difficult vendor or difficult customer for the manufacturers right there's different labors of relation I've been on the manufacturing and the distribution

[00:33:48] side in my career and in most recently before you know Tom and I found the lead spark was on the manufacturing side as a principal and the manufacturing company and there were people that we just had better relationships with you know and and you've got many you've got

[00:34:05] relationships even as a small manufacturer that we were you have a relationship with global distributors that you kind of have to take care of for else but then when you look at that next

[00:34:17] level it's like who are our partners versus people that place purchase orders and I was appreciative of this article talking about the collaboration because if you're not doing that and and it even talked in there about you know partnership where a distributor might even

[00:34:34] frontload some inventory to help cash flow at a manufacturer different things that they can do in partnership to help each other so I thought it was a good article today yeah I love that

[00:34:45] I think when when you look at the customer supplier relationship you can either be seen as a customer a partner or a channel and wow well okay that again we went when you're talking about that

[00:34:57] relationship whether it's a distributor to a customer or a manufacturer to a distributor you can either be seen as a customer a partner or a channel and you know the channel is the highest you

[00:35:08] want to be seen by that manufacturer as like look this is our viable channel the market or next best this is our partner and so when you start talking about allocation of resources which in

[00:35:19] over the last couple years looked like inventory where we're going to send our limited inventory which we are going to send it to a customer or partner or a channel and that's how that's how they

[00:35:29] were you know operating in to be honest with you that's how many of us in the distribution level we're operating as well you've got those customers that are always squeezing you over a nickel on

[00:35:39] mice yeah yeah and you know limited inventory we were we were moving our product to customers who saw that as a partnership and they understand that we were providing a service with inventory

[00:35:49] and product and expertise and they were going to pay us for that and we were able to we were able to grow those margins yep yep I love that you know it's funny it makes me think about one of the tools we have

[00:36:01] built into to lead smart as our revenue expander where you can literally quickly look in an account and see all the categories that they buy from you right and in that conversation where you're trying

[00:36:10] to decide where you're going to allocate that's a quick easy way that you can do with if you have the right technology to say not only what are they buying from a dollar amount but what are they buying

[00:36:19] from a full lot right because sometimes you have what looks like and this is very strategic within distribution companies right you can have yourselves people and your your ERP reports that are saying yeah this customer's up but they're up in a category versus are they a partner

[00:36:36] and buying full line from us and the manufacturers can look at things the same way right because you're you're probably not going to get that inventory allocation when times are tight from a

[00:36:45] manufacturer if you go to them for a skew and you're buying from 27 skews from their competitors 100% and so many manufacturers quality manufacturers during the last couple years have put programs in place that are literally grading their distributors on that level and they're deciding

[00:37:02] not only from a price perspective you know what they're able to provide but also from an inventory allocation perspective and you know it's important you we talk about technology and everything else is coming down the pipe personal relationships with your manufacturing partners are critical

[00:37:22] because if they don't know who you are and why you're important to them you're not going to get their full attention it's great good you Mike what were those three buckets again you said partner

[00:37:32] customer customer partner and then channel and channel means I see those in a in a sending order a channel is where they're looking at you as the ability to really capture market share on a large

[00:37:45] in an out of a large area right you become a channel for them to move their their product to the market partner obviously is the next best thing they see the relationship is mutually

[00:37:57] beneficial and they want to they want to give you support a customer is like okay you know like that's that's the guy that buys the buys stuff cherry picks our line we've got to appreciate

[00:38:08] the business but we're really looking for somebody that's going to really support us all the way so it's kind of the rock pebble you know boulder rock and sand so to speak but having that

[00:38:20] and I and maybe this actually is a good way to lead into this next yep section here about what we're going to talk about a couple e-commerce and well e-commerce and marketing section and

[00:38:31] you know this first article here I think Kevin we can just talk about these together sure because they're in a related there's two articles here both of them are related to marketing the first ones mastering b to be marketing strategies on digital age our marketers relying on

[00:38:45] AI and automation at the high cost of of isolating customers and then the second one b to be influence or marketing 82% of business decision makers consider b to be monotonous

[00:38:58] creating an opportunity to redefine the category so I don't know we can I'll start with the first one here the mastering b to be market strategies and the digital age and are we isolating customers

[00:39:13] and they talk about in the article here right is that people are using AI more and more to generate content but as we probably have seen as you start to see AI content it's not well curated and

[00:39:27] well thought through it's just kind of noise it's not really it doesn't really have a communication it doesn't impact it doesn't and unfortunately I think sometimes people look at quantity

[00:39:42] way over the quality and the quantity just turns into noise right and that then ties into the second article about b to b be monotonous and boring and not really you know valuable to customers because we

[00:39:55] we've inherently created a lot of noise and we don't really create a lot of value in our messaging on marketing here so it's really interesting on how do you how do you use AI to create higher quality

[00:40:09] messaging communication how you that actually is relevant to whoever it is and then I think might go in back to what you just talked about knowing your customer, your partner, your channel you can adjust that and personalize that messaging based on who it is that you're actually talking

[00:40:27] to so I think it gives you another really interesting opportunity yeah I think you're right Tom there's a lot of noise and not a lot of clarity in what but we're seeing around there's a rush to the door to create this content and they're blasting it

[00:40:49] out without that second step which is customer segmentation and what value are they really looking to provide to the customer so I think that's gonna that's gonna hone in over time but

[00:41:00] we're in early days I think that's good there's I want it there's a few things in these articles I wanted to trigger I'm going to ask you guys both the question because all three of us here today

[00:41:10] are I also say prolific on LinkedIn and ongoing basis here's what I'm seeing I'm seeing a lot of people who were regularly posting that now I'm seeing four and five photographs articles coming

[00:41:26] from them that to me is you know and I'm the talker here in the group right but less is more and I'm just seeing this I don't know if you guys are seeing or feeling it I'm just looking at these

[00:41:40] huge pieces of content that are coming out I'm like you could have got to the point quicker and because I'm not used to seeing that from you I have assumed that that's that's some big AI

[00:41:52] driven pieces of it and in my post tend to be shorter because I'm not doing much of that I might help generate some ideas but I'm doing my content still there's a balancing act there

[00:42:07] and I'm not suggesting for one second that using AI isn't valuable in developing content what I'm just seeing is this big amount of all content with smiley faces and camerax

[00:42:20] and whatever it is next to it that I just didn't see before and do you read it and they're making a sense to you it's hard to just noise right it's just noise it's more noise until the

[00:42:30] the equation here yeah yeah and so I think that just it micro you kind of seen the same thing for sure and it's growing up in my inbox as well I mean I spend a lot of time of the day

[00:42:41] unfollowing or blocking or unsubstriping right because I'm just getting this massive influx of AI generated it's easy to spot you know which is which is sad because it's not it's not targeted

[00:42:55] at me you can tell they don't know me or my company they're they're just blasting right and so I think that's unfortunate and it's gonna have to it's gonna have to rain in if if

[00:43:10] people are going to be able to start trusting this and finding value in some of the communication that's gonna come out. Well I'd love that you know what for me is to

[00:43:18] you comment about all the emails right I'll just laugh it's like I'll see these emails come through and they'll be like a tagline from our website that just got scraped right or and once in a while they'll have something like an odd feature within you know the technology

[00:43:36] that we've developed the lead smart that'll be like from a obscure page on the website that's like there is no put it this way if you spent your own time to go research that deep

[00:43:49] you get a user time better but so it's just a bot right that's pulling data and and scraping data and to your point Mike is you can see those so easy and that does really kind of tie to that

[00:44:01] that article in this two articles that we've mentioned here one's called mastering B2B marketing strategies in a digital age and that comes from CMS wire and the other is in B2B influence from marketing it's not rocket science from adweek and really what they're talking about here

[00:44:17] is and this is just such a valuable point um they talk about there's a better way to balance the art and science of marketing and a digital first work by the talk about focusing mainly me mainly on customer on the customer by the spoke experiences even across different

[00:44:39] personas in different market segments so to Tom's point earlier you know about understanding the customer they talk about embracing technology but only if it fills gaps right what is it going to do to enhance your customer experience they talk about and I they say keep an eye on

[00:44:54] the competition but both ears open to customers and this is my big takeaway from all of this nobody articulates your company's value more than your customers do right i made a little video

[00:45:06] when i was in the northeast last week traveling and i was out seeing prospect and customers and multiple buying groups and associations that were partnered with and got to listen so much

[00:45:19] to what they're seeing and what they're hearing we try and do that here each week it really understanding that pretty less of competitors and then the other piece that i really liked about

[00:45:29] this is and we've not come out of not here about having a revenue department versus sales and marketing and they talked about building a bridge between those two groups of people within an organization so

[00:45:41] you know marketing should really understand the voice of the customer and how they're touching that customer and articulating that across the sales the sales can really help take that message to

[00:45:53] the customer so very good yeah i want to hit a couple comments before we move on here um so my Tyler says you've really nailed it in the last 10 to 15 minutes so before that before that i'm not so sure

[00:46:08] with the last minute we would have to do next time i have peaks and values just like yeah but very well spoken and knowledgeable i agree thank you Tyler and i wanted to hit a couple

[00:46:18] comments here about i think brought up a good one related to marketing here is you know the problem is where he says is the markedly typically on z-combe they are not permit proficient at one

[00:46:30] to mint or one to one communication they do one to many and these articles talked about this is right if you're going to cut through the noise you're going to have to do more one to one almost

[00:46:41] and want at least one more personalized communication or spray and spray with a bunch of noise that we're all getting in and dated with yeah i agree Tom i mean i i think you can have a

[00:46:53] a finally you know well thought out crafted marketing strategy that's looking to fill your bucket with opportunities but in the end of the day the technology and some of that does not replace

[00:47:05] people in your business that are willing to talk to other people if you if you don't have that you're going to have a real hard time having meaningful partnerships or developing a channel

[00:47:18] for your product or your technology into the end user space and when last comment here you know Kelly i think is reinforcing what you're just saying here right they're saying that a lot of

[00:47:29] content from a priori related products is going to be filled with that AI so the human is even more important you know it actually knows the product and can write and really put that context in

[00:47:40] there so that you actually are communicating something that makes sense versus again just having a lot of information that nobody fully understands so good yep hey before we jump ahead there's one last thing this the second article right that talked about influencer marketing right

[00:47:57] and it's kind of interesting right we see that crossover and we think about tick talk or Instagram or so forth and you know one of the cadashians doing or what is this athlete doing or whatever it is

[00:48:08] but there were some interesting points in that secondary article about really being an influencer ourselves and partnering with others right might I consider you at some level and influence or in wholesale distribution you're out at the events you're partnering with the right people you're doing

[00:48:24] you know your own marketing your team is doing your marketing you have an omnichannel presence both your company and your persona um and it's just I love the comment that they made in this is

[00:48:36] the trick trick trick trick trickle doubts some key points but the one that it means is that humans are humans and they're talking about using LinkedIn right and it says LinkedIn users are diverse

[00:48:47] someone who buys makeup on tick talk at night could be a marketing director by day preferences don't clock out at 9 a.m. or 9 p.m. what works in b to see can shine and b to b right

[00:49:00] because we can take that influence of an individual whether it's a celebrity or it's just us and we have multiple places we can touch them we could be touching them on tick talk and Instagram

[00:49:13] and things like that but we want to get them as they're coming back and doing that shift that says I might be buying you know or reading or consuming content on Instagram but I have those same habits

[00:49:26] that I'm taking back that I'm doing day to day when I'm 9 to 5 so to speak on LinkedIn I just moved platforms but I've got the same behaviors that I might have in my personal life

[00:49:37] I've got the similar behaviors at how I'm consuming digital content it just shifts to the platform shift during the day yeah I agree and I think to the point of b to b being boring

[00:49:51] there's a little bit of truth to that I think you know when you talk about influencers and providing value part of that what people are doing you know from you know five to nine is

[00:50:01] a fun component to it right there's an old team of value to that and I think that it's okay for us in the b to be space to not only bring value but make it fun and I'm excited to see some

[00:50:13] colleagues in our vertical that are starting to do some of these things right there in their marketing and the value proposition they're giving to their customers they're gamifying it a little bit or they're making it fun there there there there

[00:50:25] there's some comedy-baked into that and it's engaging their customers and making them want to come back for more value and to see kind of what's the next you know clever thing that they're

[00:50:35] that they're feeding it to them with yeah good well we had a comment there Bob Britain says I'm completely wrong so Bob will just agree to disagree because I'm I'm a believer full believer

[00:50:47] that people cross over well but that's a well I think you may be saying something a little different okay I think that I think that you can definitely apply b and it's our read Bob's comments

[00:50:58] so that you can he says I completely disagree with b to see working with b to b b to c is based on what b to c is based on need then maybe you can get to want I think that there's two things going

[00:51:10] on here right there's a lot of things from a marketing strategy perspective that we can and we do take from our consumer experience into the business world right I mean just look at Amazon even

[00:51:21] from a marketplace perspective or a buying experience but I do think what he's trying to say there and I and I is right I think about as a consumer you're the soul you're the soul decision maker

[00:51:34] right or maybe you have to check with your wife or husband or whatever but you basically see something you want it you may will take action on that it will create that immediate demand in business

[00:51:45] generally especially in b to b there's maybe multiple decision makers there's a much bigger decision making process the need has to be justified so it's a different experience all the way around

[00:51:55] and you're not in your consumer I think that's more what Bob was to be but certainly some of the tactics and things that we use and and b to c can very well carry over to b to b and make it more

[00:52:08] interesting and more and more relevant well and there's another point common to Bob made as well it's good point about game of vacation right and you can do that on both sides

[00:52:17] right that that's really the key and in my my view of all of this has been look we need to touch people wherever they're at right and you know we even you know think about you know people

[00:52:28] say well why why would a technology company like us that is focused on wholesale distribution ever doing add on on Facebook right well guess what when Mike Mortensen's looking at his kids ski trip right and we've been touching him on LinkedIn we've been touching and through other campaigns

[00:52:50] whatever it might be me and we can drop that needs more technologies or our product channel cloud information or about some issues in that same format right now we're touching him across

[00:53:02] platforms in my personal life I'm still running into these people and I see their content over here we just I think we just have that we'll just black of a better term we'll take omnichannel marketing

[00:53:13] versus omnichannel samples is a good opportunity for us and that's where my focus is on on that catchen them at all angles so we should move one though from a time to make one comment I agree with Bob

[00:53:26] want versus need is definitely something that protects the industrial distributor right because we're not selling things that people want we're selling things they need but in a market where sometimes the products that we're supplying become commoditized it's really important to help differentiate

[00:53:44] yourself in a crowded market and help those customers understand why they need divide from you right so like you said we have been touching them in various aspects of their life providing

[00:53:58] more value while you're selling that product that's all part of it right it's good yeah I just want to Kelly must know my wife really well she says men go into home depot to buy one thing specific

[00:54:10] and women go into home depot and must go down every aisle man that's exact if when I go in home depot with my wife I make her take out herself so I can find or somewhere around home depot with me

[00:54:23] who's in your mic their time right now yeah okay anyway I was just gonna say Kelly must know my wife really well and her her behavior at home depot so well this is similar to my wife's

[00:54:38] behavior at Costco I do this Costco shopping because all of a sudden you know the budget just so that's interesting good good comment Kelly good comments Bob great comments today in general

[00:54:49] we're we're kind of running short on time with some other things to talk about so let's kind of look at this we move into our technology cybersecurity and AI there's an article here about

[00:55:00] that we posted coming from Forbes that said it's a simple human why each army is to take the lead in cybersecurity and in the point I'll just kind of recap that you guys can make any comments

[00:55:12] a point was that normally we just drop everything about cybersecurity and so forth into IT you know we're seeing more and more people doing more with that each literally weekly the threats are there

[00:55:26] the number the percentage of people that are our actor have had threats are are growing consistently I think my closet even I think I saw a reply from an email from you that said there was a

[00:55:37] I think a message from maybe your IT that said something about this isn't a regular email coming in or something like that right so organizations are taking steps but what I really liked about this and we

[00:55:49] could have a whole conversation about this but it talked about the human side of it right so HR playing a big role in cybersecurity they know who works there better and who's no longer works

[00:56:02] so forth and IT and them having that relationship to make sure we know about what's going on but such a big factor with cybersecurity is about training people and HR traditionally will own the

[00:56:15] training components of things in a business so if we only leave cybersecurity in the IT side of the business we're missing the boat because that HR group of people is really going to know

[00:56:26] did we get our message across correctly are we effective with the message on how we need to protect ourselves so I thought it was a unique article and and we're we're sharing with our friends

[00:56:38] yeah I have a friend who owns a security cybersecurity training company and they're growing gangbusters probably one of the most fastest growing areas of employee training is security and cybersecurity and there's a lot of nuance to it right it's not just don't open an email but

[00:56:58] there's it's you have to you have to become more and more sophisticated yep it's all around people right it's usually not a technology problem when it comes to that but some some

[00:57:09] person on the insides has to open the door and so if we can if we can give the training but people up skill that that's a great a great way to go about it I love that article yeah good well let's

[00:57:21] jump ahead because we want to spend a little time on this co-pilots and in the genius tools as we like to call them in our company but Tom I want you to drive this one for us this is from venture

[00:57:32] be sales force made some big announcements this week about some AI tools and literally it's funny you know here's my word march so you get your I'm going to probably give you two compliments this

[00:57:44] month Mike I don't know if I've ever shared with you but you know you know the Tom and I've been friends for kindergarten so I only given two compliments a month at the most but I literally was listening

[00:57:55] some of the AI tools at Salesforce is launching and I felt like I was in a product meeting that we've had over the last many of them over the last three to five months so Tom why don't you take this one away

[00:58:08] yeah I know they've released you know they've announced it I think back in September so it's was about six months ago but they've released Salesforce has released their first version of a copilot

[00:58:19] and you know a chatbot basically obviously the big deal is it's using your internal data from Salesforce so you're using in first party data you're using data from your business versus just data from the internet and they really really continued to emphasize right for this to work in

[00:58:40] an organization you've got to have your data act together so you know yeah I mean I think it's of the first step the copilot capabilities at Salesforce released are predominantly designed for larger enterprise company both from a price perspective and implementation perspective but I

[00:59:01] think it definitely was in alignment as you said Kevin with a lot of the stuff we've been focusing on working on obviously where partners with Salesforce so we get a lot of the inside

[00:59:12] scoop on some of these things as well but you know a lot of the things that we're doing for wholesale distribution specifically is a lot of what they covered in released here generally as it relates

[00:59:22] to their copilot I think it all ties into what we've been talking about today right is is having knowledge and data that's available to us and the core piece of this is going to be as we talked about

[00:59:35] a number of times today about copilot how do I make myself more efficient now the big thing that I think we need to look at and what needs to be the focus in my belief and in wholesale distribution

[00:59:50] and manufacturing is companies have to make a decision and they're going to have to come to a reckoning very soon on these things is do I want to go figure all this out on my own and buy one

[01:00:05] off products and just pay for the paid version of of jet GPT or whatever other AI tools and LLMs that they want to use or do I want to move down the incumbent line of thinking and

[01:00:19] incumbent line of thinking would be my elite smart channel cloud user my assalesforce user Microsoft is showing us the simplest fastest example of the incumbent solution is most of us use Microsoft Office related tools so now we have those tools of copilates coming into help me build a

[01:00:40] presentation right when you look at companies like ours right or what sales force is doing and where we're launching products and tools in is I already have an incumbent solution in my business

[01:00:52] where I've got abundance of data now if you're just using CRM for CRM sake to track how many emails somebody sent and made sure their notes got in probably not going to be a great tool for you

[01:01:06] but when you start doing what we do with our customers which is connecting to ERP systems marking on matian e-commerce systems watching customer journeys through the CRM by bringing all that data together you've got this treasure trove of data you know typical distributors going to have

[01:01:22] tens of hundreds of thousands of pieces of invoice data potentially million pieces of invoice data that translates into the CRM and now that CRM is replaced by running day-high tools against to get this actionable insight so I think that the time is coming very quickly

[01:01:39] as we're looking at copilates digital twins and so forth as the companies are enough to make that decision am I going to figure this out and go hire a digital person that is a prompt engineer or am I

[01:01:51] going to rely on an incumbent supplier or incumbent technology partner to help us down this path. Yeah Tom I'm not surprised at sales forces is doing this right I mean and when you talk about the in-commoncy path I think many of the large technology providers out

[01:02:09] are scrambling it's everywhere from your search engines to ERPs right they're scrambling to adopt this technology and and for most of us we engage with so many of pieces of technology

[01:02:21] on a regular basis in our day that it's hard to know how to use all of them to their fullest even even use them effectively and so they're baking these copilates in shoot I mean it's about any truck

[01:02:34] and it's telling me you know the thing being near drives itself and it's telling me hey you you've driven a long time but you should pull over and take a break I mean there's this is this

[01:02:45] is going to be the world that we live in where these copilates are hoping us navigate the technology that we live our life on top of so I'm not I'm not surprised at all I think it's really smart

[01:02:58] my director of e-com and digital my powers just chimed in and said we are finding so many applications through MS 365 apps that are available their copilot tool that that's that in commonsy piece you were talking about Kevin I mean we're already using it and they're providing

[01:03:14] us just better tools to be able to do that so I'm super excited about those those technology providers that are thinking this way well I said I'm glad to hear you say that but and you

[01:03:26] really nailed it with all the tools that you already have right and and that's what I think the importance of and the value comes with what you can do within commons and maybe it's not

[01:03:36] an incumbent of that you have now it's it's somebody that you're looking at that might become your incumbent right because they have the right the right tools that are necessary in

[01:03:45] that place because like you you really kind of bubble this up I don't know if you meant to but the reality of it is is that people get either we we call it either log in or click fatigue

[01:03:57] and it's where is that data is it an a B.I. tool I have do I need to get that at your P is in a spreadsheet on SharePoint somewhere where's that data and where we're headed at

[01:04:07] at least where we're headed as an organization is taking all of that data and saying hey you know what one of the features that's within my customer intelligence and CRM tool is I can get AI related data

[01:04:20] back from one piece of software that already need to spend a good chunk of my day in right that connectivity is super important to Kevin right absolutely you know because incumbents are changing the the the incumbent technology providers that aren't going this direction

[01:04:38] and providing this connectivity uh the piece of technology are going to see themselves their value proposition waning in the market and companies like us are looking for those incumbents that are right awake and saying okay and then if they're not we're saying where do we need to move

[01:04:54] because the connectivity's not there the uh the tools aren't there so it's really it's there's a shake up going on in that arena yep yeah and there was one more thing that they pointed out in here

[01:05:05] and haven't I know this is something you and I we haven't agreed on it completely in some of our product design things but I believe that the user experience and technology is going to become more conversational unless transactional and that was one of the things that sales force

[01:05:22] also mentioned is able to leave that the user experiences are going to become with technology more and more conversational unless and less transactional and I know that we've all lived in a

[01:05:33] transactional world where you go to a screen and you put something in and you get it out but as we start to get familiar with having conversations it's going to become it's just going to become natural

[01:05:44] for us to do that so anyway lots of good stuff I thought in there yep it's good and by the way I'm coming around to your line of thinking more and more so just well it usually does it's the smart thing

[01:05:55] to do it's true actually smart thing to do well I think I think what we what we know right now is how we get the user interface of how we get data from ERPE, commerce and working automation and typically those are all silo data within an

[01:06:13] organization anyways where the future is it's going to be a different user interface and all of that data is going to be available and we're going to have some things that get pushed to us

[01:06:23] but says you need to be thinking about this we do that and leads more channel cloud already and there's other things that are going to be I can go now talk to my data with whether I'm

[01:06:32] voice recording or typing something and to get that information back so let's cover a few last little pieces here in our sales and M&A section there's good article there that the distribution strategy you put together about how distributors can strengthen their role in channel partnerships

[01:06:50] this is that kind of recap from a podcast they did about a month ago at a couple large electrical distributor representatives from actually I think they were both in Europe and but it was good article

[01:07:02] and it talks about stuff that Mike was talking about earlier and we talked about a length about having that relationship between manufacture and distributor that is a partnership that manages and supports the channel which has always been a struggle right quickly covering

[01:07:19] we put this article in here again about the best and united hardware announcing an intent to merge right and the reason that I shared that Mike I'd love some of your quick thoughts on that is the

[01:07:32] idea that you've got do it best which is more retail driven which typically is got maybe some of those people have a little bit of a wholesale side but then you've got this united hardware

[01:07:45] that was all wholesale right coming together and I think we're going to see start seeing more and more of this crossover of I've got front of the house and and I Mike I'm going to ask you this if

[01:07:57] you see this more in some of the rural and emergency rural but maybe not less metropolitan areas that you have branches in where maybe the you go to the lumber yard the lumber yard has a commercial

[01:08:11] component or a retail component that's tagged true value or do it best but there's a big wholesale side of that you see that some markets you're in for sure right you know in in more out of the way

[01:08:23] locations distributions is not is not as segmented and so your your your force to kind of be everything to everybody and traditionally when you go into larger markets I think you see some distribution companies being very focused well we're going to we're going to concentrate on just on

[01:08:39] wholesale or we have a retail presence or online the the shift is happening and I'm I'm seeing it in our industry where these companies that were traditionally back at the house business focused on

[01:08:50] large contracts with large customers are now seeing that there's you know they need to have an omnichannel experience and they need to they need to hit all all of value drivers for their customer so if the customer needs a contract that they can handle large event advantage inventory

[01:09:07] great but if they also need retail help over the counter they need a website they need to they need to have that so it's really forcing distributors to you know play all roles and that's I'm

[01:09:16] not surprised that you're seeing consolidation like that that gives that gives the company the new entity all of those skill sets very good yep the so if we jump time to our um

[01:09:30] I go there to our uh people and leadership section that we added a while back there's a quick article there on US labor market steadily easing so we won't go into that one today that's a long discussion

[01:09:42] but it is isn't this is it women in business day or week that we should talk about briefly in our women's day international women's day so to hats off to all the women in business

[01:09:55] in our lives and that keep I don't know probably the three of us keep us moving every day so last piece industry scuttle but some revenue increase information from hearty with the heating air condition refrigeration market trade association so good news there our friends of

[01:10:15] Mublico little shout out to them with uh Mike you guys use Mublico no yeah absolutely yeah awesome yep so we have a we have a we have a deep integration with them so we can take their

[01:10:27] marketing messaging that they do as well as their the data coming from their customer messaging tools bring that right into our CRM good folks they just put a partnership together with uh hot search

[01:10:39] where they're doing some products search on their platform uh which is kind of a cool little thing so appreciative of those guys Pierre Kelly and the team and Jim and over there at Mublico so

[01:10:49] congratulations to all of you guys uh the folks at Andree's International just did another acquisition so congratulations to them as well so that kind of takes us to our last section which we don't

[01:11:00] have time to chat about today but a good article there about an ex google engineer charged with stealing AI secrets for Chinese companies whole discussion we could have right about espionage there

[01:11:13] and arrest this week by the military officer kind of doing the same thing so as we start thinking about data and come in earlier about from Kelly there about cleaning data in our organizations

[01:11:25] as we start talking about data understanding who has access to it how it could leave our organizations is probably hard or probably important I should say so all right guys wow yeah

[01:11:38] man that was a lot that was a lot to cover Mike thank you and really get insights really appreciate you having your hair today and enjoying it and having a lot of value yeah guys are great

[01:11:50] well we're treating all these articles every week had I have like a three hour show or something to keep up with everything you can yeah it's good and then we have good guests that bring

[01:11:59] value it's it's important as well so I don't mind taking that little extra time in our audiences to with us so kind of in recapping we didn't do this today again I'm Kevin Brown Tom Burton with

[01:12:10] our good friend Mike Mortensen with ARG and Dustryl and we've enjoyed being with you all the day as we mentioned before if you're listening on the podcast on any of the popular podcast formats

[01:12:22] you didn't get a chance to see that email newsletter that we review every week that goes out to thousands I think we're eight or nine thousand people that get that each week now if you would like

[01:12:32] to get that newsletter just reach out to us hello at leadsmarttech.com or the website for the podcast which is www.aroundthehoracod.com and all our previous episodes are there YouTube live Facebook live

[01:12:50] linked-in live all the podcast formats if you like what you hear each week come join us again share it with your friends hit the like subscribe button leave a review whichever platform you're on we would greatly appreciate that Mike anything exciting for the weekend ahead

[01:13:08] my first weekend back at home in a little while so we still got tons and tons of snow I got a little cleanup to do and it's sunny so joyo weekend at home good very good can you get that new

[01:13:20] track to plow your driveway by itself well no it's not it's it could but I don't think i'm going to put a plow on the front of it and then it'll be you know I drop it off at the port of Tacoma

[01:13:31] day before yesterday so it'll be here on Monday for the exact good good congratulations all right okay um Mike thank you for everything today and we'll wish everybody a fantastic weekend do

[01:13:43] good things be kind and enjoy see you next week we hope you enjoyed today's episode and our guests each week we try our best to dig into the topics that are impacting your business so please

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